London: Under pressure to slash its annual financial assistance to India, cash-strapped British government is likely to cut its one billion-pound aid bill to the country. Justine Greening, who took over as Development Secretary last month, said she wants to see Britain's links to richer developing nations become about business, rather than hand-outs.
Greening's comments came amid pressure on her to get better value for money from Britain's 12 billion-pound annual spending on countries like China and India, which have their own space programme. Signalling that India will be a target for cuts, she said, "We should recognise that as countries get richer, we need to be responsible about how we transition in our relationship with them from aid to trade."
"Those are the discussions that I am having with the Indian government at the moment," Greening said at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham. Greening also pledged to stop programmes that are not working because of corruption or inefficiency, amid criticism of many old schemes.

"I'm going to take a new approach to ensure that every pound we spend has the biggest possible impact," she was quoted as saying by 'The Telegraph'. "That may well mean stopping programmes where I don't think they are working and putting the money elsewhere." Prime Minister David Cameron has come under criticism for promising to keep spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid during the recession.
There is growing unrest among backbenchers in the party and Lord Ashcroft, a major donor and Number 10 adviser, recently called for the "golden taps to be turned off". Greening said she is planning to take a more ruthless look at cost control but added it was "smart" for Britain to spend money on aid to help international security.

"I believe in development," she said. "It is in all our interests for countries around the world to be stable and secure, to have educated and healthy populations, and to have growing economies." She also pledged to make sure the European Union spends its money more wisely.
"I don't think it's right that the EU still gives money to those countries higher up the income scale, when we've taken the decision to target the poorest," Greening was quoted as saying by the paper.

How will we fund our $1.25 billion Space program, and the $2 billion Aircraft Carriers, not to mention our $9.5 billion Scorpenes. We need that heavenly aid from Britain that multiplies and funds our entire government.

I think this aid is mostly being given to NGOs engaged in education, health etc, many in mineral rich tribal areas. One such NGO, Action Aid with which ex IAS Harsh Mander was associated, prepares reports on condition of minorities in India while ignoring the same in Pakistan and Bangladesh where it also operates. What is the idea behind such activities.

Govt of India should monitor strictly the activities of all foreign NGOs or if possible ban foreign NGOs like Russia has done.

Good. Better use that money to look after poor in the streets of Britain. Bharatvarsh got along fine before the British, we certainly wouldn't be any worse off without them.
But, the nation is greatful for any genuine humanitarian aims this aid achieved.

Why do we even have to wait for others to shut down the aid programs, it should be the moral obligation of the government of the day to do it, definitely so when the government coffers are brimming with cash.

It is because we allow all such activity, that we remain vulnerable to all sorts of exploits by the donor. With aid comes whole host of organizations and people in various forms who drop by with agendas that far exceed than what they have been assigned to do.

Lessons be learnt and we say a thank you to all the aid programs that are run in this country, irrespective of who the donor is, what the intention of the donor is, and whether the donor comes across as arrogant or polite.

The average bill is to the tune of 2-2.5b usd annually and the GoI has enough budgetary resources to fill in the void created. Each year our annual budget grows by around 20%, and in usd terms by 50-80b usd, enough to accommodate 3b usd here and there, wherever the need be. As such the subsidy bill is being significantly capped, which would leave the government with much more resources.

Itâ€™s not the taunts, which make the headlines, that are embarrassing, but the exploits which we allow willingly.

The reason why most of the developed countries give loans to India is that, we are one of the few countries in the world who have never faulted on the repayments. These countries get a reasonable guaranteed return on their money, unlike some other countries.

Also not all aid is in cash, in fact most of the aid is in form of goods from the donor country. Actual cash component is very small. This is another way of promoting the domestic industry and giving an export thrust to their own economy. There are hardly any moral reasons for the aid.

there's somewhere a thread with detail discussion on the so called British "AID". Can someone merge it with that. The discussion, with proof in form of articles, reveals how that aid were not aid at all, but self-serving mission of f-ing Britain.

David Cameron was under intense pressure last night to slash the Â£1billion in aid Britain gives to India after the country said it no longer wanted the money.
India's finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the booming country should 'voluntarily' give up the Â£280million a year it receives from Britain.
He told the Indian parliament: 'We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development spending.'

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, left, shakes hands with India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on a visit to London in July last year
It also emerged that in a leaked memo dating from 2010 India's then foreign minister Nirupama Rao suggested India should not accept any further aid from Britain's Department for International Development because of the 'negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID'.
Sources in Delhi suggested British officials begged India to accept the aid. One commented: 'They said British ministers had spent political capital justifying the aid to their electorate.

How will we fund our $1.25 billion Space program, and the $2 billion Aircraft Carriers, not to mention our $9.5 billion Scorpenes. We need that heavenly aid from Britain that multiplies and funds our entire government.

How will we fund our $1.25 billion Space program, and the $2 billion Aircraft Carriers, not to mention our $9.5 billion Scorpenes. We need that heavenly aid from Britain that multiplies and funds our entire government.

Click to expand...

Add the corruption to that list....it will be time before the claim for it....